


A Walk on Uneven Sand

by Curator



Series: Onassis [2]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Depression, Dubious Consent, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, bad choices, don’t tell people what to do; advise them what to think about, trigger warning: panic attack, trigger warning: self-harm (in a very sci-fi way), trigger warning: unhealthy sex, well-meaning friends and family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:28:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23252473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/pseuds/Curator
Summary: Grieving her husband and overwhelmed by the prospect of being alone again, a familiar face presents himself as a solution to Kathryn Janeway’s problems.Sequel toWhat You Feel is What You Are and What You Are is Beautifuland prequel toThe Tumbling Waves of San Francisco Bay.
Relationships: Kathryn Janeway/Cheb Packer
Series: Onassis [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1637395
Comments: 35
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My five stages of gratitude to cnroth for her beta work, her thoughtfulness, her wisdom, her kindness, and her support — on this story in particular, but for life in general, too.

Sand flows through her fingers and she laughs.

Grains in the middle are like the waters. They tumble and flow.

Grains at the sides are like clouds. They puff away on wisps of air.

Where do they go?

Her head tilts as she scoops another handful of white, fine sand. It flows through her fingers and she laughs again.

The sun will kiss the waters soon and she will be called for evening meal. 

She scoops more sand.

“Kathryn Janeway!”

She squints. There is a man walking toward her. He is round and has dark shoes and dark clothing and — oh! — he has a semicircle of white hair on his head. No one has hair here except for her. The village children will be happy. They like touching hair.

“No!” Papa runs toward the man, his white, flowing tunic so different from the man’s crisp, black jacket. “I told you she’s uninjured.”

“Like hell.” The round man walks faster until sand kicked up by his boots lands on her white dress.

A dark sleeve thrusts forward. The round man grabs her arm, hard, pulling her to standing as he taps a small, metal triangle on his chest. Her fingers, curious, reach for the shiny object, but the round man bats them away.

“You must not take our daughter.” Papa wrings his hands. “Please, she is all we have left.”

“She’s not your daughter, she was your daughter-in-law — and I know you don’t understand that concept but understand this: I will bring the full force of Federation law upon you and this entire village. What you’ve permitted to happen here is unconscionable.” The round man directs his voice toward the small triangle. “I’ve got her. Two to beam up.”

Papa disappears, his cry echoing in her ears.

***

The lights from the ceiling are as bright as the sun and the round man lets go of her arm. There are skinny beds and a hard floor under her bare, sandy feet and so many computers. 

A woman, a bowl of black hair on her head, steps forward. 

“My name,” the woman touches her chest, “is Dr. Selar. Can you tell me your name?”

Oh, she just heard it. The round man said it. 

“Kathryn Janeway.”

“Good.” Dr. Selar taps a computer in her hand. “Can you tell me your rank?”

The tip of Kathryn’s tongue presses against the roof of her mouth. Her eyes wander the room.

“Can you tell me your home planet?”

Kathryn tugs on her necklace as Dr. Selar’s finger tap, tap, taps at the computer. 

“I don’t care what it takes.” The round man’s face has become very red. “Fix her.”

Dr. Selar’s head shakes. “That may not be possible, Admiral Paris. This level of neural damage is unprecedented.” 

“No excuses.” The round man walks toward the wall. 

The wall opens! 

Kathryn smiles at the wall, so kind to move when someone tried to step through it. 

“That,” the round man points at her, “is not Kathryn Janeway. That is an abomination and I won’t have it. I won’t permit it. You’ll either put her mind back together or find someone who can.”

The round man is gone. 

Kathryn waggles her fingers at the closed-again wall. Goodbye, round man.

Dr. Selar touches Kathryn’s elbow, steers her toward a bed. “I’m going to give you a medicine so you can sleep. Would you like that?”

Water leaks from Kathryn’s eyes. “No.”

“Why not?” The doctor’s head tilts and Kathryn sees a pointy ear. 

“I don’t want the dream.”

The floor begins to vibrate. _Warp_ , Kathryn thinks, and wonders what the word means.

The doctor taps her computer again. “A sleep without dreams, then?”

Kathryn nods. She settles on the bed, something cold presses to her neck, and she sighs as everything becomes black.

***

A reddish-orange blur sharpens until it is the towers, roadway, and suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Kathryn is looking through a window.

The thin mattress of a biobed is against her back. 

Starfleet Medical. 

She must be at Starfleet Medical.

The heels of Kathryn’s hands find her forehead.

She remembers the first night on Delta IV when she pulled the cortical suppressant from her neck and threw the device so hard it bounced off the storage containers that held Iliam’s books. Then she promptly descended into the exact mental degradation she had been warned to avoid.

Her groan is accompanied by the opening of her hospital room door. A half-dozen doctors shuffle in.

“Good afternoon. Can you tell me your name?” Dr. Selar asks.

“Janeway, Kathryn, Admiral. Home planet, Earth.” Kathryn’s throat is so dry she tastes the tang of blood as she speaks. “Service number 067-alpha-5631-beta-2. Current assignment, Starfleet Command. How long have I been here?”

The doctors murmur to each other. 

“You’ve been here for two months. You were on Delta IV for three weeks during which time your brain was bombarded by —”

Kathryn sits up. She ignores her blue medical gown and crosses her arms. “Thank you for repairing the damage. I don’t need the lecture. I won’t go back to Delta IV.”

“You could, actually.” Another doctor steps forward. “Your Esper rating has dropped to undetectable levels. In layman’s terms, you burned out any psionic potential in your brain.”

No telepathy. 

No empathic communication. 

Not even a goddamn Vulcan mind meld if she had the inclination.

A muscle in Kathryn’s neck flexes as she turns her head away from the doctors. 

“Any other permanent damage?”

More murmurs.

“We don’t think so. Time will tell. This was a massive undertaking, Admiral, basically rebuilding your entire —”

She jumps off the biobed. Her knees nearly buckle and she sees spots, but Kathryn steps toward the replicator. “Then I’ll program myself something to wear and be on my way. I’ll check my messages to see when I’m back on duty and —”

“Why did you do it?”

Her eyes flick to the young-looking doctor who asked the question. “I beg your pardon?”

The doctor’s cheeks flush. “Your in-laws said you removed your cortical suppressant. Why?”

Because thinking hurt too much.

Because breathing hurt too much.

“It must have fallen off in my sleep. Night terrors are in my medical record, as I’m sure you know.”

She moves toward the replicator again. 

“Admiral.” Dr Selar motions toward the biobed. “With all due respect, you aren’t leaving this room, much less this facility, until you’ve been cleared, medically and psychiatrically.”

Kathryn wants to find a phaser and shoot every one of them. She didn’t ask for her brain to be repaired. She didn’t ask for —

She remembers comming Seven of Nine. It was the night before the transport vessel was due to leave for Delta IV. Her voice had been shaky as she asked Seven, “How did you do it? When the voices were gone. When I forced you to become an individual even though you didn’t think you could tolerate the loneliness of your own thoughts. How did you do it?”

Seven had cocked her head and said, “I adapted. As will you.”

The biobed dips as Kathryn climbs on.

She stares at the ceiling.

May as well get this over with.


	2. Chapter 2

Passing the medical tests is easy.

But Kathryn lies to every Starfleet counselor that assesses her.

“Of course I’m sad,” she says, her voice steady and her eyes unblinking. “My husband died three months ago. What kind of person wouldn’t be sad?”

“Of course I want to return to work. Starfleet was generous to extract me and to retain my commission.”

“Of course I want to keep living.”

Admiral Paris visits once. She’s on the biobed and doesn’t turn to see him as he informs her that she won’t be court martialed for dereliction of duty. She closes her eyes when he says it must have been quite the night terror to be recorded as “awake and alert” by the cortical suppressant recovered from Delta IV.

Her friends visit sometimes. Iliam’s friends; she understands that now. They were his colleagues, not hers, and the pity in their eyes brings gooseflesh to her skin. It’s like she’s naked and they can see through her to every fissure that doesn’t bleed.

Her family visits often. They tell her about their lives, about things that happen in a world that still spins, somehow, when it should have stopped and turned to dust.

When she sleeps, there are no dreams. She wonders if this has something to do with the psionic burnout in her brain, but she doesn’t ask. She’s grateful, though. Her dreams on Delta IV were always the same. Iliam would be there, explaining there had been a massive mistake and, clearly, he was still alive. Dream-lips would kiss her and dream-hands would touch her and she would wake up crying until her mind degraded to the mercy of waking up confused.

The evening Kathryn steps into the San Francisco fog, a newly replicated coat zipped up to her bare neck, her mother is on one side of her and her sister is on the other. Her ability to recall new information isn’t as sharp as it was before her trip to Delta IV, but doctors cleared her for duty. 

“My apartment is supposed to be ready. I’m perfectly capable of finding the address.”

Phoebe reaches for Kathryn’s shoulder, but the older sister flinches and Phoebe pulls her hand away. 

“You can stay with me or you can stay with Mom, but you’re not staying by yourself tonight.”

Kathryn doesn’t point out she will be by herself no matter where she goes. Instead, she lets them take her to Gretchen’s house in Bloomington and lets them put food in front of her at the kitchen table — not the dining room table where her husband’s chair is pushed in as if it knows its purpose has been fulfilled and no one should ever sit on it again. She lets her mother listen as she takes a sonic shower and she sandwiches her ears between pillows when her mother’s murmurs over the comm to her sister float through the closed bedroom door.

There used to be a phaser in the nightstand.

It’s missing.

***

In the morning, Kathryn beams to her new apartment. She had planned to take a transport shuttle, then remembered she can beam wherever she likes. Iliam was bothered by the transporter, but she doesn’t mind it. 

Hell, she should get down on her knees and thank the damned thing.

It was two days after she found out Iliam died that Kathryn walked into a transporter company, one of those businesses that will beam items from place to place or store patterns on a chip for later rematerialization. She had demanded to use the equipment herself and quickly tapped for coordinates of the home she and Iliam had shared on Alameda Island.

First, she locked on to her nightstand. She demateralized it, then destroyed the pattern.

Then she did the same for his nightstand. 

For their bed.

For his clothes.

For her clothes.

For the vase of roses on the kitchen counter. 

For the food he would never eat, for the sofa he would never sit on again, for the desk where he would never again pick up his computer terminal and answer the comm with a delighted, “Papa!”

For everything she could think of until she got to his books. 

And the fingers that had been destroying everything trembled as they covered her mouth. Because she couldn’t do it, she couldn’t destroy his beloved books. So she had beamed them to the emergency transitional housing Starfleet had provided when she had refused to go home, refused to go with her family, refused to even leave headquarters until she had gone over the data herself five, ten, twenty times to be sure the _Daystrom-H_ was, in fact, pulled apart by gravimetric forces so strong their intensity couldn’t even be recorded.

She had stacked the books in storage containers, not looking at titles or allowing her hands to linger on bindings, then arranged passage on a transport ship to return them to Delta IV herself.

Her cortical suppressant was in her desk drawer at headquarters and Admiral Paris had stepped in as she searched for it.

“Do we need to monitor for chroniton emissions?” he had asked, arms crossed.

Chronitons — a sign of time travel. 

She had thought Starfleet trusted her again. She had thought so many things ... been wrong about so many things.

“No,” Kathryn had said.

Because she couldn’t justify violating the Temporal Prime Directive for something so transparently selfish. And, even if she did, there would be another version of herself in the past. Neither Kathryn would be willing to share, she was sure of that, and Iliam would be too diplomatic to tell this grief-crazed version of his wife to get lost, so her past self would have to do it.

No, time travel wasn’t an option. 

Though she certainly hadn’t planned for her trip to Delta IV to make such a mess of things in her own timeline.

The door to the new apartment swishes open. It’s all Starfleet furniture, clean and modern, but Kathryn only cares about the storage container on the dining room table.

She pries open the lid and sees her only two personal effects — the Deltan dress she wore on the beach and her Attachment necklace. 

It’s only been an hour since she woke up at her mother’s house, but Kathryn grabs the necklace, climbs into her new bed, and, with the necklace coiled in her fist, wills herself to sleep.

***

“With all due respect, sir, I can find my way to my own office.”

Admiral Paris matches Kathryn’s stride even though they both know the arthritis in his knees hasn’t responded to treatment in years.

“You’ve been reassigned.”

He hands her a padd.

Kathryn skims the information, sees that her furniture and decor were transported to the office next to his. 

That is, the office he moved into five years ago. 

When he came back to work a week after Julia Paris died. 

A joke about being placed in the bereavement wing flutters through her mind. 

“Fine,” she turns, “then I can find my way there.”

With the exception of pulling her up by the arm on Delta IV, Admiral Paris has never touched her. He didn’t hug her when her first fiancé and her father died, didn’t even shake her hand when _Voyager_ returned home. 

But when the door to her new office closes behind them, Admiral Paris grasps Kathryn’s shoulders. His fingers press through uniform padding to indent her skin.

“You think you’re the only one?” Flicks of saliva land on her chin. “You think you’re the only one who didn’t want to exist anymore after losing someone? I was married to Julia for sixty-three years. It’s never enough. But you’re a Starfleet officer and you’re behaving like a spoiled child.”

He shakes her. It’s just once, but it’s rough and her newly put-together brain bobbles. 

“Pull yourself together, Kathryn.”

He stalks out.

She doesn’t rub her shoulders.

She doesn’t inspect her belongings to ensure everything arrived. 

She doesn’t even look out her new window. 

She just sits at her desk and logs on to her computer terminal. 

Surely there is work to do.

***

For a month, Kathryn works and sleeps. On _Voyager_ , she would climb into bed and responsibility would set her heart hammering and her brain pinging and she would reach for a padd or a book. 

There’s no responsibility now.

No one needs her.

No one wants her.

Yes, she gets invitations from friends — Iliam’s friends — but she declines. Who would choose to be reminded of grief? She’s doing them a favor by matching their polite requests to see her with polite refusals.

She did agree to attend a few _Voyager_ crew events before Iliam died, but she can’t even think about that, so she doesn’t cancel even as the dates creep closer.

Her family tries, and she has dinner with them once a week. They eat at Phoebe’s house and no one points out this is abnormal, that they always ate at Gretchen’s. Once, Gretchen takes Kathryn aside and says maybe Kathryn should have kept the house on Alameda Island, but Kathryn pictures her father’s study, untouched since the day he left to test his prototype ship nearly thirty years before, and the vegetable casserole she ate sloshes in her stomach.

Kathryn’s new apartment is in the Fillmore District of San Francisco. This allows her to walk to work, but there’s no view of San Francisco Bay. She requested one bedroom and one bathroom and chose a lower floor to avoid seeing the skyline.

The evening light is dim through her living room window and her uniform jacket hangs from the back of her chair. She’s typing on her computer terminal. The ruling finally came through to dismiss charges against Iliam’s parents for reckless endangerment, neglect, and willful ignorance of grave danger to a Starfleet officer. Kathryn sends a text-only communique to apologize for troubling them.

She sets her computer to automatically delete any reply.

She stands, ready for the release of dreamless sleep, when her door chimes.

It must be flowers.

People still send condolence bouquets. Kathryn always thanks the delivery cadet, then carries the vase, stems, and blossoms to the recycler.

She taps the keypad to open the door.

“Hey, I heard what happened and figured you could use some vitamin C.”

And before Kathryn has a chance to say anything, Cheb Packer pulls her into a hug so tight the air is pushed out of her lungs.


	3. Chapter 3

“Cheb, I really —”

“Shhhhh.” His hand cradles the back of her head. Her arms are pinned to her sides. “My parents told me everything. You don’t have to say a word.”

She wants to say words. Words like “let go of me” and “get out.” 

But she’s so damn tired.

Her face is pressed against his chest, muffling her voice. “How did you —?” 

“I have friends in Starfleet. They gave me your address and I came straight here. I’ve been stationed on the Porcus Sea on Tellar Prime. It’s my two-week rest rotation. I cancelled all my plans so I could spend time with you.”

And she realizes the sharp edge digging into her cheek is the commbadge of his Federation Navy uniform.

He’s still talking. She tries to focus.

“… which means I can take you out or we can stay in, but we’re going to catch up over a nice meal and then, tomorrow, I reserved a court for us to play Velocity. When was the last time you played Velocity?”

What’s she going to say? That she’s been existing in a limbo of work and sleep since Starfleet Medical repaired her self-inflicted brain damage?

“It’s been a while.”

Cheb’s arms tighten, then release her into a rush of air. “Well, the Velocity court in New Berlin is great. You’ll love it. C’mon, are we going out or staying in?”

Kathryn sees a duffel bag at Cheb’s feet.

“You haven’t even gone home?”

He chuckles, a flash of white teeth and a quick shake of shoulders. “Home is Navy barracks on Tellar Prime. When I’m on Earth, I visit with my parents, with my brothers and sisters, and with friends. But, I told you, I cancelled all my plans to spend time with you.”

Kathryn struggles to remember. 

Cheb is the oldest in a family of five kids. 

He always had a big group of friends. 

When they talked just before she left for Starfleet Academy, the last time after all the times she broke up with him, Cheb had said he would never be lonely but feared she would, that there might be something wrong with her and that she should get counseling if she ever had time between science experiments.

She hadn’t thought about that in decades.

Now, she blinks rapidly.

“It’s nice of you to come by, Cheb, but I’m not hungry.” 

Cheb dips. His duffel bag strap is in his hand, then slung over his shoulder. He motions for Kathryn to step aside.

“Then we’ll catch up while I eat. I’m starving.”

Her feet shuffle and he’s across the room, dropping his bag by the replicator and tapping commands. Two plates materialize. He carries them to the dining table, then goes back and replicates napkins and silverware.

He sits and motions for Kathryn to do the same across from him.

She does. 

There’s a tomato salad in front of her.

“You and your dad always scarfed those down.” Cheb smooths the napkin on his lap. “It won’t be as good as your mom’s, but it’s worth a try.”

Kathryn’s chest tightens.

It’s been decades since she had a friend who remembers her father.

She can’t recall the last time she was hungry, but the bright red salad Cheb replicated looks better than anything she’s made for herself since she’s lived here. 

Her fingers find her fork and when she chews and swallows her first bite, Cheb’s face splits into a wide grin.

***

He tells her about every one of his siblings, people she hasn’t thought about in decades. 

“If Gina’s daughter makes it to the finals, she has a real shot at representing the planet in zero-grav tumbling at the Federation Games. You know I’ll be the guy in the front row waving the Earth flag, yelling, ‘That’s my niece!’”

He tells her about the Navy’s facilities on Tellar Prime where he teaches survival training in the desert, on the ocean, and within the icy peaks and warm valleys of mountain ranges.

“The plasma squalls are gorgeous, but you hate Indiana’s thunderstorms so these would scare the hell out of you.”

He tells her about his friends scattered across planets and Naval bases throughout the quadrant.

“So when Johnny intercepted the captain’s subspace message, we knew we had three days before the ‘surprise inspection.’ I’ve never cleaned so fast in my life — including that time in high school when we spilled those self-sealing stem bolts all over the floor of the experimental design classroom.”

When his plate holds crumbs and she’s eaten half her salad, Cheb tosses his napkin onto the table.

“My parents said your husband passed away almost four months ago. I mean, you’ve had a pretty easy life, but that’s gotta be tough.”

She chokes on a tomato. “Easy life?”

Her father and first fiancé were entombed under a polar ice cap.

Her ship spent seven years on the other side of the galaxy.

Her husband was killed by the spatial phenomenon he dedicated his career to studying.

“Sure.” Cheb steps to the replicator again. “Admiral’s daughter. Loving family. Great schools, great extracurriculars. You shot through Starfleet Academy like a rocket and became the first in our class to make admiral. You got everything you ever wanted and more. Pretty impressive stuff.”

Cheb pulls a plate from the replicator and Kathryn sees gingersnaps.

He always brought gingersnaps for everyone at his table in the high school cafeteria.

When Cheb sets the plate down, Kathryn reaches for a cookie. The spicy-sweetness brings memory-echoes of worrying about her hair, hoping to get into Starfleet Academy, and the lucky feeling that, out of all the girls in school, Cheb Packer chose her.

She looks up and his mouth is moving.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “what were you saying?”

There’s a flash of teeth and a shake of shoulders. “I said, ‘Do you have a guest bedroom or should I take the couch?’”

Her arms cross. “This isn’t a hotel, Cheb.”

“Of course not.” He bites into a gingersnap. “But, as I’ve told you twice before, I cancelled all my plans to spend time with you. Don’t you think the least you can do is give a guy a place to sleep?”

Sleep. 

He’s kept her up for more than an hour and she was tired before he arrived.

Tired? Or craving the oblivion of nothingness?

She doesn’t want to think about that.

“Fine, take the couch. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

***

She hears Cheb snoring through her closed bedroom door and, in the morning, Kathryn tiptoes around his duffel bag explosion of clothes and padds to leave for work.

The sun arcs across the San Francisco sky as she attends briefings, issues orders to captains, and reads reports more slowly than she did before Delta IV. She drafts lectures for her Advanced Borg Studies course that starts in a few weeks. Finally, as the bustle around headquarters slows, Kathryn has time to open the file most important to her. 

Her proposal to map the Paulson Nebula. 

The last thing Iliam knew she wanted to accomplish.

Every denial has stated the nebula is low priority and Kathryn has asked for too much in terms of vessel size and personnel.

She can’t cut down on stellar cartographers.

Medical and engineering staff are required.

Nebular dust is a piloting challenge, so a rotation of three conn officers seems sensible.

Her eyebrows furrow.

Maybe two conn officers? They would have to be good, damn good, but any decent Starfleet pilot should jump at the chance to map uncharted space.

She taps calculations.

She trims to two conn officers, cuts the request for a doctor and nurse to only a nurse, and selects a smaller class of starship. She double-checks her work and resubmits.

Her chime rings.

Before she has a chance to call for entry, the door opens and Cheb strides in, trailed by Kathryn’s assistant, Mari Perez.

“As I said before, you need to wait, Mr. Packer.” The small ensign, usually calm, is a blur of waving arms and stomping feet. “I have to determine whether the admiral has time to meet with you.”

Cheb’s chest rises and falls in a dramatic sigh. “Commander Packer. And I told you, Kathryn and I have plans. If we’re not in New Berlin in fifteen minutes, we could lose our court.”

The evening before, when Cheb mentioned Velocity, he never told Kathryn a time to meet.

Now, he turns to her.

“Didn’t you say it had been a while since you’d played Velocity?”

She blinks. “Yes, but —”

“So let’s get going.”

Kathryn checks the chronometer and it’s almost 1800 hours. She doesn’t have anything else she has to do, though she usually tidies her desk and, on the advice of doctors at Starfleet Medical, she sets a to-do list for the next day before leaving work.

Mari’s hands are clenched into fists.

“Would you give us a moment, please, Mari?”

The ensign backs out of the room, eyes narrowed toward Cheb. The door closes behind her.

Kathryn stands. “Cheb, there’s a certain procedure that needs to be followed at headquarters.”

“Of course.” He grins. “But there’s procedures to having a guest in your home, too. It’s hot as blazes at your place and you never asked if the temperature was all right. We both forget procedure when we’re excited to see someone, right?” 

He grabs her hand so hard the tips of her fingers turn crimson. 

“Velocity, Kathryn. Let’s go.”

She stumbles after him, too busy realizing she set the environmental controls at her apartment to the warmth and humidity of Delta IV to argue.

***

“It’s all right.” Cheb’s arm is slung around Kathryn’s shoulders. “Velocity is a demanding game. You’ll do better next time.”

The arm is heavy. Kathryn wants to push it away, but she also wants to drop her Velocity phaser and watch it tumble downward and shatter on the floor. She envisions the sickly green stored plasma leaking over jagged shards of superconductive crystal. The whole mess would require a cleanup team.

But phasers don’t break that easily, so she lets Cheb pull the device from her hand and deposit it in the return canister.

“C’mon,” Cheb leads her off the court and into the common area of the sports center in New Berlin. When they step outside, the chill in the night air is typical for Earth’s Moon, and Cheb quickly walks them a few doors down, then inside again. It takes Kathryn’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting.

It’s a bar, loud and crowded with humanoids.

Kathryn hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since Iliam died. She draws in breath to say she doesn’t want anything, but Cheb is talking to the bartender, then each of Cheb’s hands holds a glass with a foamy beer inside. He cocks his head toward a table.

“I don’t want a beer, Cheb.” Kathryn’s arms cross.

“You could sit down first.” He winks as he settles into a booth. “And this is Navy rules. Winner buys the loser a beer. If you don’t want to drink it, that’s your choice.”

She sits across from him and a cold glass slides toward her.

“I got you a chicha de jora. It’s a corn beer, like the ones from those parties in high school. I can get you a water if you don’t like beer anymore. I was just trying to be nice.”

She does still like beer.

And she hasn’t had a chicha de jora since before _Voyager_ left for the badlands.

Cheb chatters, sipping from his own beer as he tells Kathryn how he set his guest code at her apartment, changed the environmental controls to human standard, then visited with friends and family before swinging by headquarters to pick her up for Velocity.

A bead of condensation trails down the side of her glass, distorting foam and amber liquid.

Another bead slides down.

And another.

“Kathryn.” Cheb’s fingers snap. “That was a funny story I just told. You’re supposed to laugh.”

The din of the bar recedes and there’s a pounding in her ears. 

She has no idea how long he’s been talking or what he may have said. 

She doesn’t want to be here. There are couples here, humanoids wrapped up in each other, and there are people smiling as they talk to their friends. She wants to be home in her bed with her Attachment necklace and dreamless sleep.

“I need to go.”

Kathryn bumps the table as she stands and the beers slosh in their glasses. She can hear Cheb call her name, but she pushes through crowds in the bar and on the sidewalk as she hurries to the transporter station, Earth rising in the Moon’s night sky.

***

She sleeps through Cheb’s return to her apartment and his snoring doesn’t bother her as much as it did the night before. Her path to tiptoe through her dawn-lit living room is the same. She attends more briefings, issues more orders, reads more reports, and drafts more lectures. It’s too soon for a response to her Paulson Nebula request, but Kathryn still checks its status a half-dozen times.

As she finishes her to-do list for the next day, Mari comms her.

“ _Commander_ Packer is here to see you.” 

Kathryn’s hands still. 

She had somehow hoped he would be gone from her apartment, gone from her life, when she got home.

Her throat is tight, but she manages, “Thank you. Send him in.”

The door swishes open and Cheb darts through. His back presses to the wall. His breaths shudder and the tip of his tongue sticks out from curled-up lips. 

“That ensign … who doubles as ... your personal bodyguard,” he pants. “I think ... I’m safe. But … if not ... my death … would not be friendly fire.”

She understands he’s joking, but her eyebrows drift toward each other. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Hang gliding!” Cheb grins as he pushes off the wall. “I was going to fly solo tonight, but I switched things around so you can tag along.”

She draws in air to say she doesn’t want to go hang gliding. She spent all of her energy doing her job and after her shameful attempt at Velocity and her discomfort at the bar, she’s all the more certain that what she needs is her necklace in her hand and her head on her pillow.

But her wrist is clenched in Cheb’s fingers and he’s pulling her along as he talks. 

“The glide will take us over La Jolla, so not too far from here but a whole other landscape. You’ll love it. I’ll tell you what to expect even though the experience is going to speak for itself.”

His words wash over her and her feet follow where he leads.

***

The hang glider is a tandem, so Cheb controls the handle bar and flying wires. Kathryn is strapped a few centimeters above him. They’re parallel to each other with her hair pinned back so she can see the Pacific Ocean and its narrow strip of rocky shoreline that gives way to jagged bluffs. The glider has a small power source, but Cheb lets the wind propel them as he follows the coastline.

Anti-grav boots, required safety equipment, are heavy on her feet.

A pelican swoops below them, a brown dot against the tan beach until it reaches the open sea and dives for its dinner.

Iliam wouldn’t enjoy this. 

He liked to be close to the water, not high above it.

But air rushes over and around her and they arc through an impossibly blue sky and her arms stretch to her sides and Kathryn thinks of Leonardo da Vinci. 

_ Flying! Like the birds! _

Her mouth quivers. It’s not a smile. But it’s close.


	4. Chapter 4

Cheb speaks loudly as they wait in line at the crowded transporter station in La Jolla.

“Picnic lunch tomorrow. I’ll swing by your office with a basket.”

Kathryn is standing in front of him in the queue, turned so they can talk. His hands hook onto her hips and he pushes. She stumbles. 

“Line is moving,” he says. “There was a gap behind you.”

It wasn’t much, but she supposes every centimeter counts in a busy station like this one.

“Thanks.”

“So, lunch, I was thinking 1300 and we would have an hour.”

She glances over her shoulder, wary of holding up the line again. “All right. I’ll meet you in the lobby at headquarters.”

“Is this about your assistant’s vendetta against me?” Cheb’s arms cross. 

Kathryn had figured meeting in the lobby would be simpler, saving Cheb a stop at the check-in desk. 

“No, I —”

“I know you’re going through a tough time, so I didn’t want to say anything, but most people give their friends their comm frequency instead of turning every get-together into a game of hide and seek.”

Cheb reaches out and steers Kathryn by the hips. She stumbles again.

The line must be moving.

He’s still talking. 

“We’re old pals, though, so I know you didn’t mean any harm.”

It’s almost their turn and she swivels to face forward. Chatter and transport fill her ears. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, “but you could have given me your frequency.”

She hears Cheb’s chuckle. “You’ve always thought differently from everyone else, Kathryn. It’s cute.”

He rattles off his frequency, but she doesn’t have a padd to input it. The doctors at Starfleet Medical said her trouble recalling new, complex information was psychological, not neurological. Their advice to use lists and reminders have allowed her to do her job. This is the first time she has been without a way to compensate.

Her hands shake.

“I apologize. I can’t remember that.”

As they step onto the transporter pads, Kathryn tells Cheb her comm frequency. 

When they rematerialize in her apartment building’s small transporter room, she repeats that she will meet him in the lobby of Starfleet headquarters for lunch at 1300 the next day.

He doesn’t say anything in the lift and she doesn’t hear the clatter of his padds or the sound of his snoring as she takes a sonic shower, puts on her nightgown, and coils her Attachment necklace in her fist.

It’s when her head is on her pillow that her commbadge chirps.

She fumbles for the badge on the nightstand and taps it. 

“Hey.” It’s Cheb’s voice through the comm and from the other side of her bedroom door. “Good night.”

Kathryn blinks in the darkness. “Good night.”

She hears him chuckle, then cut the comm.

No one has wished her good night in the month she’s lived here. 

There is pressure behind her eyes, but she scrunches them shut and wills herself to sleep.

***

Cheb spends the picnic chattering about friends and family he’s visited on Earth. 

Kathryn looks to the twinkling sky.

She had expected to eat in San Francisco, but Cheb carried the picnic basket from the lobby of Starfleet Headquarters to a transporter station.

“We both like the stars,” he’d said when they materialized in a park in Dubai.

Crickets chirp as grass from the other side of the world tickles the back of Kathryn’s neck. Cheb talks and she stares at constellations that never change.

There is a rustling next to her. 

“Constancy, right?” Cheb’s head tilts skyward. “The same stars that guided sailing ship captains. Like how people can have constant traits like tenacity and commitment and concern for others.”

Kathryn’s eyes shift from the sky to the man whose hand is reaching toward hers. 

She stands. 

“I have to get back to work.” 

***

“If you change the specialized science officers to flex officers, it could trim four positions.” 

Kathryn and Admiral Paris are in a conference room at Starfleet Headquarters, bent over a padd-laden table as he reads the latest denial for her proposal to map the Paulson Nebula. Her lunch with Cheb the day before unsettled her stomach — as did his comm, again, to wish her good night even though he had left a padd to say he was out with friends that evening. Coffee powers her brain as she inputs the admiral’s suggestions.

“Have you considered double-bunking?”

Kathryn’s head shakes. “I hadn’t. Six months seems like a long time to have a roommate.”

Admiral Paris taps his padd. “You’re right, but if the mission requires half as many crew quarters …” He turns the device and Kathryn sees her vessel request drop from moderate-demand ships to low-demand ships.

“Roommates it is.” Kathryn taps her padd. “I appreciate your help with this, Admiral Paris.”

A grumble comes from deep within his chest. “You’ve worked hard and didn’t ask for any favors. Six denials and you’re still at it. Besides, it’s good to know I still have a few things to teach you.”

The corners of her mouth quiver again.

“I have another suggestion, Kathryn, and I don’t think you’re going to like it.” The admiral’s hands fold over his belly. “Have you considered leading the mission yourself?”

She hadn’t.

“You certainly have the credentials to map uncharted space, and saving Starfleet the trouble of finding a mission commander would not only incline some of the requisition admirals toward approving your plan, it also would prove how serious you are about this proposal.”

Kathryn hadn’t been serious at first. Her early proposals reflected her curiosity that a nebula near major trade routes and full of useful elements had never been mapped. But the mission has become personal, some sort of last promise to Iliam and she wants it done already.

She taps to input her name as mission commander.

“Thank you, sir.”

Admiral Paris gives her a crisp nod.

She submits the revised proposal.

***

A few hours isn’t enough time to receive a reply, but Kathryn checks the proposal status before she leaves her office for the day.

Just as she expected, no decision.

Her commbadge chirps.

“A few of my siblings and I went fishing today,” Cheb says. “My dad is grilling the tuna steaks and they’re going to be delicious. I told everyone you would come try some.”

“I can’t.” Kathryn’s arms cross even though Cheb can’t see her. “I’m having dinner with my family.”

“That’s great! My parents are in the same house so we’re eating in Bloomington, too. I’ll save you a couple bites of tuna steak and you can join us for dessert around 2100. Everyone is jazzed to see you again.”

Kathryn remembers Cheb’s mother, a whip-smart particle physics researcher. His father, a kinesiologist, was always designing exercise routines for the family — smart with so many energetic kids in the house. The siblings are a bit of a blur, but everyone in the family was nice enough.

“All right,” she says.

She transports to Bloomington and picks at her food, which isn’t unusual, but when her chair scrapes the floor to leave Phoebe’s table early, Kathryn’s mother and sister demand to know why. 

She tells them about dessert with the Packer family.

Gretchen and Phoebe begin to shout. 

Phoebe’s husband gathers the kids and Phoebe stands to kiss them good night, then turns toward her sister. 

“Cheb Packer is an ass.” Phoebe’s hands are on her hips. “You dumped him thirty-six years ago so what the hell are you doing now?”

“Having dessert.” Kathryn stares at her sister. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a huge deal!” Phoebe’s arms go wide. “He’s an octopus. He gets his tentacles around you and squeezes out your common sense.”

The image of a Cheb-faced octopus drifts through Kathryn’s mind. It’s interrupted by a deep sigh from her mother.

“Once you’ve had the best, you don’t fuss with the rest.”

Kathryn’s arms hug her body. “Mom?”

“Your husband died.” Gretchen’s eyes flick to a photograph of Edward Janeway, then back to her daughter. “That demands a certain decorum.”

And it slams into Kathryn so hard she struggles for air. 

“You think I’m doing something wrong by spending time with Cheb. You think I should be alone, grieving, for the rest of my life.”

Gretchen’s hands push on the table to help her stand. “I didn’t say that. I said …”

But Kathryn isn’t listening anymore. She stands, finds her jacket, wrenches open Phoebe’s front door, and lets her feet guide her to a once-familiar house where she sits at a once-familiar table and once-familiar Packers tell her they’re so pleased to see her again after all these years and she’s just as delightful as ever. And if she hears Cheb’s dad pat him on the back and say, “Guess you finally reeled in the one that got away,” it doesn’t matter because these people don’t see the losses of a woman in her fifties. They see a grown-up teenager who achieved her dream to get into Starfleet Academy, serve as a science officer, and explore the stars.


	5. Chapter 5

He’s always asleep when she leaves the apartment in the morning. But, toward the end of the workday, Cheb will comm Kathryn with a plan.

A Bolian yoga class. 

A demonstration of Denobulan glass-blowing. 

Tickets to see a Nausicaan rock band. 

And if the arm he sometimes slings over her shoulders is too heavy or if his occasional hug is the same too-tight embrace from that first night, then she can ignore those things. 

And if her mother and her sister comm her — repeatedly — to say she’s making a mistake, that Cheb can’t be trusted, then they don’t understand. Kathryn’s mother is the type of widow who pours her time into her children and grandchildren and Kathryn’s sister has a loving partner to fall asleep next to every night so neither of them could possibly have any idea what it’s like for Kathryn right now.

Neither of them could have any idea what it’s like to need to be distracted by Cheb and his banal chatter and his endless activities and his stupid snoring from the couch because, without distraction from him or from Starfleet, there’s nothing else.

Nothing.

***

Kathryn arrives in her office as the morning sun cuts through the San Francisco fog. 

The message light blinks on her computer terminal. 

Proposal denied.

Mapping the Paulson Nebula is a non-essential mission, the denial reads, and even her reduced personnel demands are too labor-intensive. 

She blinks rapidly.

Takes a deep breath. 

There’s busywork to do, replying to messages and planning her Borg course, as she waits for the sound of movement in the office next to hers. 

Then, padd in hand, she chimes at his door. 

Admiral Paris calls out permission to enter. When she does, his face slackens. “What happened?”

“Denied.”

The padd shakes as she raises it so he can see.

He pushes his own computer terminal aside.

For an hour, they examine every option. 

They assign everyone double shifts, saving ten crew positions across the mission.

They trim engineering staff to the chief. 

They cut the operations officer, first officer, and tactical officer and assign their responsibilities to the mission commander. 

They reduce to one pilot. Any decent conn officer could transfer out from an assignment that brutal, but Kathryn has to believe at least one pilot in the fleet would want to practice the nuanced, intricate flying that would be necessary.

Admiral Paris repeats himself when she loses the thread of complex information and he rereads the entire proposal while she stares out his window without seeing a thing.

“Your problem is going to change from approval to staffing.” He hands her the padd. “This will get the go-ahead. I’d stake my commission on it.”

She clutches the device. “I really appreciate this, sir.”

Years ago, Admiral Paris would talk about his wife, about his children and grandchildren. With the exception of Kathryn’s first day back after her release from Starfleet Medical, he hasn’t spoken about his personal life since Julia died. But when the admiral leans over his desk, his breath comes out in a tremble. 

“I’ve commanded fleets, negotiated peace treaties, and welcomed new members into the Federation. Nothing made me as proud as when the Museum of Earth finally agreed to name that exhibition hall after Julia.” 

The admiral’s eyes shift to the padd in Kathryn’s hand. 

“I know why this is important to you, Kathryn. I hope you get it.”

She nods. 

Blinks rapidly. 

Swallows. 

Admiral Paris’ voice turns gruff. “Now get out of my office. I have a final exam to write that half my class is already sure they’re going to fail. Can’t let those cadets down, can I?”

She speaks through a too-tight throat. “No, sir. Thank you, sir.”

***

In that evening’s comm, Cheb gives Kathryn coordinates to meet him at a seafood restaurant where a stubby candle flickers on each table and there are fake portholes on the walls. He chatters, like always, but when their entrees arrive he takes a deep breath and sits up a little straighter.

“We’ve been trying to pretend something, haven’t we, Kathryn?”

She had been watching the flame, the blue, orange, and yellow and the spaces in between. When she shifts to look at Cheb, it takes a moment for the contours of his face to coalesce. 

“I talked with your former husband at that class reunion thing a year and change ago. Nice guy. With him gone, it must be comforting to know there’s someone who cares for you.”

She tries to lose herself in the candle again, in the blinding brightness of the ephemeral.

“I’ve been married four times,” Cheb says. 

Kathryn’s gaze returns to the man sitting across from her.

“Yeah.” He dabs the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Losing a relationship you thought would last is a kick in the pants.”

Kathryn would have described losing Iliam as a knife between the ribs, a slow agony of collapsing lungs stealing the ability to scream, blood filling where oxygen should be, a crumple to the ground instead of even the dignity of a fall. 

But she doesn’t say anything. 

Between bites of his dinner, Cheb tells Kathryn about every one of his spouses — a pal-turned-lover from his days as a cadet, a quantum biologist he met on vacation, an orbital skydiving instructor with a passion for chromolinguistics, a former commanding officer. 

“Your commanding officer?” she blurts. 

His shoulders rise and fall. “People are still people. Best C.O. I ever had and, after I transferred away from her command, we had some good years together.”

Her voice is a whisper. “What happened?”

Cheb’s napkin lands next to his plateful of crustacean remnants. 

“She cheated on me. They all did. That’s how I know what it’s like to feel alone. When I heard what happened to you, Kathryn, damn, I just wanted to be your friend.” 

His fingers rake his hair.

“But I see the way you look at me and you know I look at you the same way. It’s crazy after all these years to reconnect this strongly, right?” 

His hand stretches across the table. 

“And we’ve been good, taking it slow out of respect for your situation, even though we both want this so badly. That’s why I’ve got the paperwork half done to transfer to Earth, to be with you the way we both know we should be together.”

Their table’s candlelight catches Cheb’s face and Kathryn squints. 

His eyes are the same as she thought of them when they were teenagers — a blue so deep a person could get lost.

She loved him then.

She looks down and her hand found its way to his.

She pulls it back.

“I’m going home, Cheb. You can come by to get your things when I’m at work tomorrow. Have a safe trip back to Tellar Prime.”

***

Kathryn’s Attachment necklace is in her fist and her head is on her pillow when she hears the quiet.

No clatter of padds from the living room.

No snoring. 

Nothing. 

Like quarters on a starship flung to the other side of the galaxy.

The gemstone of her necklace digs into a palm that has gone sweaty.

She can’t live like that again. 

The loneliness.

The solitude.

The isolation.

She’ll go crazy, she’s sure of it.

The blanket that had been pulled to her shoulders is kicked down to her feet. She gulps air gone thin. Her heartbeat is so fast, every vein in her body pulsing so fiercely, that it’s better to press her face into her pillow, to rebreathe jagged breaths because she’s choking, choking on the surety that she could die in this apartment and it might take days for anyone to even know what happened because she doesn’t matter to anyone anymore.

She wonders if she’ll pass out.

She hopes she’ll pass out.

Her commbadge chirps and her trembling fingers find the smooth metal. 

“Hey.” Cheb’s voice is warm and kind. “Good night.”

Didn’t she turn him down at the restaurant?

Why is he comming her?

Does it matter?

Kathryn’s head lifts from her pillow. “You — you, too.”

He chuckles, of course, then cuts the comm.

And the quiet roars in her ears.

If Cheb hadn’t broken her routine of working and sleeping, how long would it have taken her to connect her isolation and her pain? Loneliness doesn’t cure itself. She needed a friend and he stepped up, after all the decades they had been apart.

She doesn’t love him. She knows she doesn’t.

But Kathryn looks at the necklace in her hand.

It’s not enough.

And she can’t spend another second in this quiet. She just can’t.

The necklace touches her lips, then slides into her nightstand.

Her fingers find her badge.

“Hey there,” Cheb murmurs.

“Could … could you come over?” Her voice is far away, like she’s the one on the other side of a comm line, not him. “Now?”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Her eyes close. “Yes.”

“I’ll be right there.”


	6. Chapter 6

She wasn’t sure what to say, but she doesn’t have to say anything.

Cheb’s hug is too tight, but she’s getting used to that. He’s muscular, she tells herself, probably doesn’t know his own strength.

His tongue is in her mouth and she isn’t sure how that happened, but it’s not fair to compare Cheb to Iliam when Iliam could sense what she wanted. Cheb is human and she hasn’t been kissed by a human in a decade and a half, not since she and Mark said their goodbyes before her quick mission to the Badlands. So this is fine. She can live with this.

Then her palms are flat against her Starfleet-issue headboard and it’s all right because Cheb’s just excited. He doesn’t mean to be so rough. After all, she’s been with him before and while the whole thing took less time in high school, she knows he’s just happy to be with her because he keeps saying it, over and over, “I’ve waited so long” and “I’ve missed your body.”

It’s normal to stumble to the bathroom, too. God, she remembers the first time she had sex with Cheb — the first time she had sex with anyone — and how surprised she was when she stood up and the mess dripped down her legs. And it’s good that she isn’t surprised by that anymore, even if there’s a thin ribbon of blood like there was that first time.

Sleeping on the bathroom rug is normal, too. She’s very tired and tired people sleep in all kinds of strange places. 

Because Cheb is snoring in her bed and that means she’s not alone.

***

Kathryn tiptoes in the morning, just as she has since Cheb started sleeping on her sofa. She looks at him, stretched across her bed.

There are fine lines near his eyes and mouth.

His hair has gone grey.

His biceps are bloated, pectorals too pronounced — even asleep. When they were teenagers, he had been fit in a practical way, not showy.

But he’s here and he’s not dead.

And, she tells herself, that’s all she needs. 

***

Kathryn and Admiral Paris are deep in a holo-revisualization of starship deployment across five sectors when her commbadge chirps.

“Hi, honey,” Cheb practically purrs. “I’m on my way to your office so we can finish my paperwork.”

Admiral Paris’ eyebrow rises, but he’s silent as he swaps hypothetical vessels — Ambassador-class for Galaxy-class — and studies the shift in projected coverage of key star systems.

“I’m in the middle of something.” Kathryn leans over to better view the admiral’s changes. “It will have to wait.”

“It’s 1300. I timed this around your usual lunch hour and now you’re changing things on me?”

Kathryn’s lips compress between her teeth.

“We can take a meal break.” Admiral Paris taps a console and the simulation vanishes. “Reconvene at 1400?”

Before Kathryn can reply, Cheb’s voice comes through the comm. “Good. I’ll be at your office in a few minutes. Tell your assistant to hold her fire.”

The comm goes dead.

Admiral Paris moves toward the door. Kathryn follows. Corridors recede and when they step into the lift, Cheb is there.

His face splits into a grin.

“You’re Owen Paris, aren’t you?” Cheb’s hand extends toward the older man. “I went through this phase when I wanted to be in Starfleet and I studied your family. Your dad, Michael Paris; your grandmother Shohreh Paris; your great-grandmother Laura Paris. I could go on and on. Man, is it an honor to meet you!”

The admiral’s arm flops as Cheb pumps the handshake.

“You have me at a disadvantage, son. What’s your name?”

“Commander Cheb Packer, Federation Navy. I was part of the team that cleared the Opal Sea on Betazed after the Dominion attack.”

The derisive sound that comes from Admiral Paris is quickly covered by a cough.

“Anyway, I would love to pick your brain for days about the Paris family, but Kathryn and I are headed to City Hall.” Cheb’s arm lands heavy across Kathryn’s shoulders. “Getting hitched. Don’t worry, I’ll have her back before 1400.”

It’s suddenly cold. 

Kathryn can’t move. 

Admiral Paris frowns. “I would think my subordinate would have mentioned she planned an hour off in the middle of the day for her own wedding.”

Two sets of eyes turn to her.

“Tell him, honey,” Cheb squeezes her shoulder. “Tell him how the Navy needs documentation to approve an immediate transfer for personal reasons. No marriage certificate and I’m back on Tellar Prime in three days.”

Of course.

Starfleet has a similar policy. 

She should have thought of that.

If she could only open her mouth to say something.

The lift arrives at their floor.

“Son,” Admiral Paris says, “cool your heels in the waiting area. I’m going to have a chat with Admiral Janeway.”

She blinks and she’s sitting in Admiral Paris’ office. He’s in the chair next to hers in front of his desk.

“Kathryn,” the admiral is saying, “what the hell are you doing?”

Before she can speak, he answers his own question.

“You don’t love that guy. He’s a blowhard, a shyster. I’ve seen you in love.” The admiral counts on his fingers. “Justin. Mark. Iliam. You laugh more when you’re in love. I haven’t heard you laugh since …”

Admiral Paris’ eyes widen. 

“This is about Iliam’s death. You tried to take the easy way out when you blitzed your brain on Delta IV, then lied to those doctors about what happened. Now you’re trying to marry that — that nincompoop as a shortcut through the loneliness of being widowed.”

His hand slams the desk.

“Starfleet officers don’t take shortcuts! Not in their jobs. Not in their lives. You’re better than this unacceptable behavior and you should be ashamed of yourself for even considering it.”

There’s pressure behind her eyes and she has never cried in front of Admiral Paris and Kathryn has no intention of starting now. But she envisions herself alone in her apartment and there are Delta Quadrant stars outside her windows and she grips the sides of the chair in Admiral Paris’ office so she won’t fall.

She blinks and she’s standing. 

Blinks and she’s in the lift with Cheb. 

Blinks and she’s at City Hall. 

Blinks and she’s saying, “I do.”

Blinks and she’s back in the lift at headquarters, a ring on her finger. 

Blinks and two heads — Admiral Paris and Mari — jerk up when they see her.

Blinks and she’s at Starfleet Medical, a bright light in her eyes as a doctor scans her brain. 

Blinks and the doctor is telling her there’s nothing physically wrong but readings suggest extreme emotional distress.

Blinks and Phoebe and Cheb are yelling at each other in the hospital room as Gretchen weeps.

Blinks and she’s in her own bed, Cheb’s arm heavy around her waist, his steady snoring the reassurance she needs that she’s not alone.


	7. Chapter 7

Cheb dismisses what happened as “Starfleet overreaction” that had the benefit of securing Kathryn a few extra days off duty.

He has to report to Federation Navy headquarters in Cape Agulhas, South Africa, so Cheb tells Kathryn they can have a little honeymoon while he waits for orders.

To Cheb, this means they zipline between rugged cliffs, dive to explore shipwrecks, and hike the fynbos shrublands.

Kathryn likes these parts of the trip.

Other aspects of the honeymoon are less enjoyable. 

Once, Kathryn tells Cheb that he’s too rough in bed.

Twice, she tells him that he’s hurting her. 

Three times, she tells him that he needs to slow down. 

His reply is always the same. “You’re so sexy, I lose my mind a little. It won’t happen again.”

She knows she’s done something rash, taken a risk with low odds of success. 

But when Cheb gets his posting and it’s in Vancouver — the same time zone and hours she works — Kathryn’s exhale is pure relief. 

She won’t have to sleep alone.

***

The day her medical leave ends, Kathryn returns to headquarters as the sun rises.

She scrolls through her messages. 

Paulson Nebula mapping mission — approved.

Approved. 

Departure isn’t for eighteen months due to high concern regarding staffing.

But it’s approved. 

Kathryn hears movement in the office next to hers and she nearly runs.

“Come in,” Admiral Paris calls.

When the door opens and he sees her, the admiral’s jaw sets. 

“Kathryn.”

“Sir,” she waves her padd, “The Paulson Nebula mission. Approved! Thank you for your help.”

His eyes are stone. 

“You’re dismissed.”

Her hands start to shake. 

“Sir?”

“No.” Admiral Paris shifts padds from one side of his desk to the other. “Your documented mental difficulty is for processing new, complex information. So surely you understand ‘dismissed’ means ‘leave my office.’ Now do it.”

Her arms cross. It’s not defiance. She’s trying to still her shaking hands, to press the padd to her body so it doesn’t clatter to the floor. But Admiral Paris misinterprets. 

“Go!” he roars. “Take your shortcuts and your easy ways out and your unprofessional conduct and report to your new superior officer.”

She lurches backward.

Holds the wall to guide her to her office. 

Scrolls lower in her messages. 

New superior officer — Admiral Peter Hendricks. 

Everything becomes blurry as Kathryn breathes into her cupped hands, the ring on her finger digging into her skin. 

***

Admiral Hendricks tells Kathryn to call him Pete. Through the lump in her throat, she says, “Yes, sir.”

There are dinners in Bloomington with grim Janeways and ebullient Packers. 

One night, Phoebe pulls her sister aside.

“Katie, what are you doing with your life?” 

Both sisters can see Cheb lecturing Gretchen on the importance of aerobic activity to help with her hypertension. Both sisters know Gretchen has already told Cheb she’s aware of the information.

Kathryn shakes her head. 

Phoebe tries to touch her sister’s arm, but Kathryn pulls away.

The younger sister excuses herself and closes her bedroom door.

There are constant activities. 

Astronomical Society stargazing parties. 

Tickets to hoverball games and the solar system dom-jot finals.

Most nights, Kathryn falls into bed exhausted. If Cheb wants to have sex, she closes her eyes and loosens her muscles. She’s learned it hurts less if she tries to relax.

There are _Voyager_ crew lifecycle events. 

Cheb challenges Chakotay to a few rounds in the boxing ring. As Chakotay strides away, Kathryn hears him mumble, “What an asshole.”

Cheb tells B’Elanna about warp theory, Tuvok about meditation techniques, and the Doctor about holographic rights.

When Cheb gives Harry parrises squares tips, it takes Harry three attempts to successfully interrupt, saying, “Thanks, but I was a three-time parrises squares champion at Starfleet Academy.” As Harry heads for the bar, Kathryn hears him mutter, “The Asshole strikes again.”

But Kathryn can’t worry about any of that.

Cheb takes her on adventures and snores next to her at night.

That’s enough.

When she lectures her Advanced Borg Studies class about drones who are helpless to stop the damage they wreak, trapped in their service to the cube, ensnared by the hive mind, this tickles some part of her brain, but she doesn’t know what to do with the information.

One morning she checks her office chronometer. Admiral Paris hasn’t spoken to Kathryn for months, not since the day he yelled at her. She’s still attuned to his schedule, though, and it’s too late not to have heard movement in the office that shares a wall with hers.

She steps out to query Mari. 

The ensign is at her desk, her face in her hands.

Her dark head lifts and, with tears streaked down her cheeks, Mari chokes out, “Admiral Paris is dead.”

***

“Integrity. Integrity was how he lived and integrity was how he died.”

Admiral Patterson stands next to Owen Paris’ closed casket. The casket is symbolic. Everyone knows that. There wasn’t a body left after saving a half-dozen cadets from a plasma fire. 

The funeral is massive. Hundreds of people, an ocean of Starfleet dress uniforms. Kathryn sees Tom between his sisters, their families filling the entire front row as late-afternoon sun streaks through the windows of a ballroom at headquarters.

Cheb is next to her, his beefy arm heavy on her shoulders.

Admiral Patterson eulogizes Admiral Paris’ career accomplishments, dedication to the Federation and to service. As he concludes, there is the shuffling of mourners expecting to rise to their feet.

But a woman in a dark pantsuit steps from the second row. Admiral Patterson nods to her as she takes his place next to the casket.

The woman is tall. Her grey hair is cropped and she wears glasses — an oddity that suggests an allergy to the Retinax V medication that corrects age-related vision problems.

Her eyes sweep the crowd, a flattened hand across her eyebrows.

“What a lot of Starfleet,” she says.

A side of her mouth tilts upward.

“Well, hold onto your pips because let me tell you a few things about Owen Paris.”

The woman identifies herself as the director of the Museum of Earth. She speaks of Owen’s volunteer work there, of his and Julia’s shared passion for history, of his commitment to ensuring the museum memorialized Julia by naming an exhibition hall in her honor.

Some people nod, but Kathryn was in space when Julia died and missed the funeral. She was aware Julia worked at the Museum of Earth and Owen was a docent.

But, as the grey-haired woman’s speech fills gaps Kathryn didn’t know were there, the director of the Museum of Earth becomes the only person in the universe for Kathryn. 

“Some people say, ‘Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.’ Owen and Julia Paris didn’t think that way. They believed in the power of history as inspiration, as stories that can help us become richer, more knowledgeable people able to quickly assess new situations via the invaluable tool of historical context. Owen and Julia Paris leave powerful lessons for all of us to understand layers of history from personal to familial to community and onward.”

People are turning in their seats. 

Kathryn doesn’t understand why until she hears sounds. Raw, wretched sounds of mourning and grief, and these sounds are coming from her, from a place deep inside, a place that is screaming and it’s screaming because she hadn’t been listening, hadn’t heard a word that part of her had been trying to say since Iliam died because that part of her sounds like him, sounds like a man she is still in love with and that man is looking up from chopping seaweed in the kitchen of a sun-filled home on Alameda Island and he’s telling her to use the past to understand the present.

And all she’s done is run away. All she’s done is try to destroy her brain, sleep away her days, and distract herself with activities and the snores of a man she doesn’t love.

Because Admiral Paris was right.

She tried to take the easy way out.

The service is over and she’s in the line of people to pay respects to the Paris family. Tom steps toward Kathryn. She’s a tear-streaked, mottle-faced mess with a runny nose and the only person who has hugged her since Iliam died is Cheb and as Tom’s arms encircle her, Kathryn understands why Cheb’s embrace always made her want to squirm away.

Tom isn’t trying to stop her.

He’s trying to support her.

She holds fistfulls of his shirt, clinging to him like a life preserver, and Tom’s hand is patting her back and some part of her knows she should be comforting him, not the other way around, but she can’t lose this feeling, this awareness of history and life and purpose that could slip through her fingers.

Like sand.

The beach at Delta IV.

She remembers pouring sand and wondering why grains in the middle flowed while grains on the sides puffed away. 

It’s because of surface tension. She knows this now. Granular streams, like sand, develop liquid-like properties when poured. If there isn't enough proximity among grains to form a stream, an individual grain of sand won’t pour. It will float, alone, until it lands elsewhere on the beach.

Kathryn distanced herself from her family, from her friends.

And, in the arms of Tom Paris, she stops floating and she lands with a shudder and a cry.


	8. Chapter 8

“The Astronomical Society on Guam is having a viewing party tonight. There’s going to be a conjunction — Venus and the Pleiades star cluster. People are bringing holo-cameras and there’s rumors about a musical performance.”

Cheb leans against the lift as it rises through their apartment building.

Someone pressed a tissue into Kathryn’s hand at Admiral Paris’ funeral and she dabs her eyes.

“No. I’m not attending a viewing party tonight.”

“Of course you are.” He chuckles, waves his hand dismissively. “It’s going to be fun.”

“Let me be very clear.” Kathryn’s back straightens as the lift door opens and they walk into the corridor. “This isn’t your fault. I haven’t been honest with you because I haven’t been honest with myself. But I’ve been using you as a crutch.”

Cheb keys in the apartment code and they step in. Kathryn has lived here for almost six months. There’s no decor on the walls, no photos, no mementos. Cheb’s clothes and sports equipment arrived from Tellar Prime but they’re in storage containers that he digs through when he needs something.

“I’ve been scared to be alone, Cheb, but I need to do that. I need to purposefully experience being alone so I can use my past as a springboard to understand my present, to plan for my future.”

The arm lands on her shoulders.

“We’re going to Guam. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

It would be so easy. 

She could go to Guam with Cheb and let him tell her what to do for the rest of her life.

But she didn’t listen to her mother and she didn’t listen to Phoebe and she didn’t listen to Admiral Paris. It took a grey-haired stranger to speak the words her bald-headed husband would have wanted her to hear and Kathryn won’t let go of that strength, not again.

“It is the morning for me, Cheb. I’ve been sleepwalking for six months. I just woke up. And you need to leave.”

He cajoles, he argues, he appeals to her sense of decency to finish what she started.

He calls her names, things like “liar” and “hypocrite.”

Finally, he stands by the door and jabs his index finger at her. “You’re the first wife to cheat on me with some crackpot philosophy about the past as a springboard to understand the present. I was right all those years ago. There is something wrong with you. You hide it behind a pretty face and that tight, little body, but you’re a crazy bitch.”

The door opens and he stomps out.

“I’ll comm you with coordinates to beam my stuff. I never want to see you again. Fuck you.” 

The door closes.

She steadies her shaking hands to delete his entry code, then log in to her computer terminal to place a comm call.

“Katie?” Phoebe’s wet paint-splattered face fills the screen. “What’s happening? Have you been crying? Are you okay?”

“Cheb says there’s something wrong with me, that I’m a crazy bitch.” Tears leak from her eyes, but Kathryn’s lips part for a smile that is big and bright and toothy. “Isn’t that great? If a terrible person tells you that you’re terrible, then you’re good, right?”

Phoebe’s head turns.

“Oscar,” she yells, “you’re on your own with the kids. I need to go to San Francisco. I think I got my sister back.”

The paint is still wet when the sisters embrace. As it dries, they talk, they comm their mother, and they talk some more.

Kathryn agrees to spend the night at Phoebe’s house, but first she checks her messages and Cheb has already sent coordinates. She comms the cadet on duty in the lobby transporter room and watches Cheb’s storage containers dematerialize. 

“It’s good, Katie, it’s good.” Phoebe’s arm is around her sister’s waist. 

“Yes,” Kathryn’s head rests on Phoebe’s shoulder, “but it’s only a first step.”

“And you’re taking it. Remember that.”

Before sleeping in her eldest nephew’s bed that night, Kathryn pulls out a padd.

She requests the first Starfleet apartment to become available, no transport of personal items needed. Housing is usually fast, so she expects a new assignment by the time she wakes up in the morning. Her uniforms, Deltan dress, and Attachment necklace all fit in one duffel bag and Phoebe helped her recycle everything else, including the wedding ring Kathryn pulled from her own finger.

She files for divorce.

She messages her friends. She may have met them through Iliam, but they’ve been her friends, too, and she tells them she’s sorry, that she went through a rough time but would like to be included in the dinner party rotation again. She offers to host as soon as she gets her new address.

Her body is tired but her brain is buzzing, stronger than it’s been since Delta IV. She doesn’t want to lose her momentum, so Kathryn taps out a to-do list. 

Change her quarters assignment on the Paulson Nebula mission to a single bunk. Rank has its privileges — and she will not allow herself to fear sleeping alone.

Go through her message archive and replicate images to decorate her new apartment, preferably photos of friends and family.

Indulge hobbies. San Francisco has plenty of sports leagues and she used to like holo-novels. Tom Paris has written an entire series of them and Kathryn hasn’t played a single one.

She falls asleep with the padd in her hand. Her Attachment necklace is still in her bag. With her, always, but she knows it’s there and, tonight, that’s enough.

***

The duffel bag strap digs into Kathryn’s shoulder as she walks through the Inner Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco.

Her new housing assignment came in overnight, but she overslept at Phoebe’s house and had to rush straight to headquarters. She worked through lunch and now is on a detour. Kathryn is curious to see her new home, but she has something else to see first.

The Museum of Earth.

Kathryn enters through giant doors, then wanders the galleries until she finds the big, black letters that identify the Julia Paris Exhibition Hall.

She stares at the word “Paris.”

“I’m sorry I let you down at the end, sir,” she whispers so quietly that she can’t even hear herself over other museum-goers. “You taught me how to be a good officer and you taught me how to be a good person. Every lesson from you was valuable, including the last one. Thank you, sir.”

She’s about to turn to leave when she remembers this is where Iliam met Admiral Paris. The exhibit that day was architecture. There were breeze blocks and extruded aluminum curtain walls and so much more.

Today, the displays teach about spouses of famous Earth leaders.

A hologram of the current spouse of Earth’s president waves as people enter. 

Kathryn waves back.

She reads every placard, soaking up the feeling of the Paris family, of the historical appreciation they share and of her own history with them.

There’s a holo-image of Copert Ningha, the first non-human spouse of an Earth president, complete with olfactory gill and facial tendrils. Under the image is the quotation: “I want maximum information given with minimum politeness.”

There’s a large photograph of Grem Goppha, the last spouse of the chancellor of United Eurasia before all the countries became one Earth. Under the photo is the quotation: “Whenever I was upset by something in the news, I reminded myself to be more tolerant, like a horse flicking away flies in the summer.”

There’s a portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a spouse of a president of the old United States of America. Under the portrait is the quotation: “The first time you marry for love, the second for money, and the third for companionship.”

Kathryn reads the words again.

Her mind quickly processes the complex information and uses the past as a springboard to understand her present. 

She married Iliam for love.

She didn’t marry Cheb for money in a literal sense, but there certainly was a transactional quality to the whole thing.

She hadn’t even thought about another relationship, much less a marriage. 

Kathryn’s blue eyes flick to the deep brown ones depicted in the portrait.

And standing there, in front of the image of a woman who died more than 300 years before she was born, Kathryn Janeway has one of those gut-flashes of certainty that she used to get as a captain. 

She will spend time without a partner and it will be good for her. 

The Paulson Nebula mission will, indeed, help ease her grief.

She will love again.

It won’t be an all-consuming, passionate love. She doesn’t want that anymore. This will be a comfortable and rewarding companionship, a gentle, satisfying love that will bring her happiness. She doesn’t know how or with whom, but Kathryn knows it will happen.

In the meantime, Admiral Paris was right — she does laugh more when she’s in love. She vows to learn to laugh as often as possible when she’s not in love, to enjoy life as if she is in love because love will come to her again. 

She nods at the portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, reads the rest of the placards in the exhibit, then retraces her steps through the museum and back onto the San Francisco sidewalk. 

As she steps toward her new apartment, Kathryn decides to stop at a flower shop. She always had roses in her home with Iliam. It’s time for something different now.

Maybe peonies?


End file.
